Benahavis is a small town in the mountains directly inland from the southwestern end of Marbella. The Mapquest map will allow you to locate it but there is no detail of the town itself.
The town is mainly known for its restaurants and we didn't have a duff meal in a week of eating out. Prices for 3 courses for 4 people, a couple of bottles of wine ranged from 12,000 to 22,000ESP. The prevailing exchange rate was 275.
We stayed in the Pachecas apartments on the road coming in to town and overlooking the cliffs and valley of the Guadalmina river. One of our (mine and Pete's) aims was to do a bit of climbing but, athough there are some bolts, the stuff we found there was far too serious for us and at least 2 grades over what lardy old David was capable of. The obvious climbs are on the big vertical face at the town end of Las Angosturas. There are some more if you continue up the slope leading up from the river.
Los Angosturas are some big blocks of limestone in the river bed and offer some interesting scrambling opportunities with the possibility of a ducking if you get it wrong. When we were there it was less spectacular than it could have been because there had just been 4 exceptionally dry years and the river was reduced to a trickle.
We paid a visit to El Chorro too but arrived late to do any serious stuff having visited Ronda and I managed to run the hire car into a parked van. Much waving of arms and "No sientos" were had before a bystander helped with the translation. The gist of it all was that we all had a visit to the insurance company where the appropriate forms were filled in and hands shaken. El Chorro is on the list for the next trip. Watch this space for some clarification of the obscure and vague instructions to access the best bits of the gorge...
Ronda was fine but even in late October was far too busy - perhaps we would have been better doing it on a weekday rather than a Saturday. It seems to be a popular destination for a day out for the Spanish. The rules and ettiquette of bull fighting were developed here and I quite liked the bullring and museum
The other major day trip we managed during the week was to Nerja to see the cave. It was truly impressive, which is more than can be said for the restaurant. We were consistenly ignored in the hope we might go away. I requested the bill twice, the second time I actually had to chase the waiter to get any attention at all. After a 15 minute wait we left about enough cash to cover (they were lucky to get that) it and left in a huff.
We are still puzzling over the Rough Guide Adalucia's comment about the cave being "conveniently discovered to coincide with the tourist boom"? Do they imply that someone blasted 4 km of tunnels, hand sculpted the features and buried a few paleolithic remains there just to relieve me of my 750ESP?
When we left the cave it was getting close to lunchtime and we didn't fancy giving the restaurant there another try so we headed to Frigiliana. This seems to be the sensible shoe centre of Andalucia. Lots of serious walkers were out exploring the mountains. Again the access to the footpaths needed finding, we could see lots of white handrails up in the foothills but it is a day's job to find the start of them. Oh well, another excuse to return soon.
All in all a week was not enough to cover all we wanted to. We didn't get to see El Torcal or Antiquerra and didn't see nearly enough of the El Chorro gorge.
Kudos to Europcar for not making a fuss about me dinking a perfectly good Renault Clio.
Brickbats to just about everyone at the Nerja cave for being so surly (I exclude the car park man, whom I had to chase around to pay.)
As you have managed to get this far you may be interested in the pictures.
And, if you are thinking of visiting, here are some books you might like to consider getting...
Rough Guide to Andalucia
We took this one everywhere.
The Michelin Map Southern Spain
I haven't been able to find a link to this if you have one, let me know so it can go here.